What makes a church grow?
Every church wants to grow, but how do you do it? There are so many books, DVDs and conferences all claiming to grow your church.
Have you spent time and money on worthless strategies that were guaranteed to grow your church?
Through a lifetime of going to church and over 25 years in church leadership I’ve seen churches grow and shrink. In this video I will tell you about the most effective church growth strategy I’ve ever seen.
No, you’ve never seen this in a book, DVD or growth conference. This is unique and revolutionary.
What makes a church grow?
Click on the video and grab a handful of visitor welcome cards.
Then send this video to your pastor and start the discussion!
Here are a few of the international healing ministries I referred to (there are many more):
Aslan’s Place (Paul Cox)
Freedom in Christ (Neil Anderson, author of The Bondage Breaker)
Elijah house (John Sandford)
Shiloh Place (Trisha Frost)
Restoration In Christ Ministries (Tom Hawkins)
Cleansing Streams
Celebrate Recovery
Restoring the Foundations
Now I want to hear from you
How do you think healed hearts can help churches grow? Just leave your answer in the comment section below.
Click here to start excavating
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I am now able to take a very limited number of (Skype or phone) personal coaching appointments. If you want assistance living a transformed life, just click here for more information.
Talk to you next week when we will discuss how to stay married.
Grant
Comments 19
As we get healed of our emotional baggage, we can then start rising up in the gifts of the Spirit that God has given to us. As we flow together in our giftings a synergy of God’s power and love begins to flow through us. As I look at the churches today, and even at my own home, emotional baggage keeps us from coming together and flowing together. We become caught up in our own filters and hurts and we miss out on what God is doing in and through our lives, alone and together. There is a pride that keeps us from getting healed, as we keep our ‘junk’ to ourselves and we don’t allow the assistance of the saints to help us rise up into wholeness. This is a complex web, that can so easily be broken if we truly allowed the love of God to flow through the Body of Christ and to touch our lives personally and collectively.
I look at churches as a hospital to care for the emotional and physical needs of the people so they can then receive the spiritual needs they need to grow in Christ. Once the emotional needs start receiving freedom, the patient then can become the caretaker and lead others through the process they walked through. The sad part is some people like their baggage and some churches get overwhelmed if they see others baggage and thus go into denial of the people in their church having baggage. The church stays in one place, grows some but then loses some.
Very good points.
I know of pastors who have said that there is no need to deal with baggage since it all disappeared at salvation since we are now new creatures.
Another said that they didn’t want to address mental/emotional issues since they didn’t want to fill the church with needy people.
How do you deal with that?
Do you want the Church to grow? So do I. We have tried so many things that we are stressed about it, I believe it is time to de-stress. It is time to be less strict and more compassionate. Just like Jesus.
Hi Doctor, August 18, 2010
I admire your approach to healing and ministry and enjoy your messages.
My limited experience has shown me that Christians become awesome evangelists (in their little circle of influence first), when others see their transformed lives and become curious about them, just like you said. What makes this so powerfully effective is when, in spite of being persecuted, that transformed Christian reaches out to hurting people, who are in turn touched by the power of God as a result! It’s those who hurt the most who are most curious about how this Christian is joyful in the midst of a difficult situation. Pain creates a thirst for relief for which there is no substitute.
In His mercy our Lord has done this with my life over the past 18 months, since I started surrendering to Him. He started with healing my body of severe arthritis, slipped vertebrae and buckled spine and even corrected my vision so I no longer need glasses. At the same time he gradually corrected my spiritual vision, to a point where He could finally start using me. I now see the lost from His perspective and feel compassion for them instead of pointing my hypocritical finger at them the way I used to. He also gives me the words to speak and has been teaching me how to pray for them.
Unfortunately we humans tend to need pain in order to reach out to God. I was baptized when I was a week old, in church every week since then, involved in this and that, but it took marital separation and great physical pain to shake things up to this point.
From my viewpoint, experiencing God’s power in the midst of pain is what grows the body of Christ.
Keep up the good work!
Alcide Bouchard
I agree with you in what you said in the video message above.God can and does fix all our problems even our baggage ones. Sometimes God works through others like your self. I am sure that God is working through you to reach and help so many other people as well as my self.Bless you for letting the Lord use you in this way.I am a widow and have some baggage that I have been praying about. Your videos have been very helpfull and I am expecting to purchase your videos and or books as the Lord provides. Thank you for what you are doing to help so many.
Church growth does so depend on the healing of leadership first then it can move forward.
I have seen this in many churches like this. Doctor Mullens said who would want to fallow a leader that is totaly mixed up, unable to lead themselves out of the mire they are in. The scripture says “take the plank out of your own eye then you can take the speck from your brothers eye.
Many pastors have been hurt doing thier ministry, they must forgive and cut the roots if they want to see any movement in the church. Emty thier own garbage barrell first.
Dick
I attended a church where the pastor carried so much of his emotional baggage with him that it affected the body. He didn’t believe anyone should see a psychologist. If you had emotional problems then you were allowing the devil to use you. Many left the church because they couldn’t deal with his counseling. It took me awhile to realize that he was dealing with depression. It seems as though many of the churches I’ve attended have Pastors who are carrying emotional baggage. Those churches obviously had no or very little growth. The Pastors who where more emotionally stable had more growth. I do agree with you though, Dr. Grant, that if many of the members are more emotionally stable and happy, that attendance is much higher. But I believe that it works more effectively if the Pastor is free from his or her baggage too.
The last few comments bring up the issue of baggage in leadership.
It’s certainly harder to lead a group to freedom if you haven’t discovered it yourself.
How can we help more leaders discover the freedom they can have when they get rid of their baggage? If the leaders come to a place of emotional freedom, the people will want to follow.
Just wondering if Grant has had any exposure to theophostic prayer method for dealing with emotional baggage and what his thoughts are on this ministry. Ed Smith is the founder.
Yes Dave I think the theophostic method is very useful. I use it regularly. It works even in very large groups.
Dr. Grant, as always your messages are very enlightening and encouraging. Emotional healing can certainly be a controversial topic, depending on who you are talking to and how emotionally free they are. Christians are new creatures, but many Christians (and Pastors) have been taught that our soul (mind, emotions, & will) and our physical bodies are sanctified along with our spirits when we are born again. If that were totally true, we’d never have another ache or pain in our bodies, or think an ungodly thought in our minds. The enemy has had 6,000 years to work on his strategy to kill, steal, and destroy, and ignoring his presence or ability is just what he wants in these end times.
In my own experience, when church leadership recognizes the need for emotional healing, and understands most of our congregations are already carrying emotional (and demonic) baggage, that’s when we can begin to see God work. The churches that I have been blessed to train their leadership teams in deliverance and inner healing immediately begin to be fruitful and multiply. I’m personally familiar with most of your ministry recommendations and have been trained by several and use their processes regularly in my healing and teaching ministry with astounding results. FYI – I believe the “soul/spirit hurts” portion of the Restoring the Foundations (RTF) process is almost identical to the Theophostic prayer method that Ed Smith teaches. RTF also incorporates Sins of the Fathers and resulting curses, ungodly beliefs, and deliverance into their integrated approach to biblical healing.
Thank you for your ministry, and your inspiring teaching.
Thanks Bill. Great to hear from someone who has seen the results when churches lead people to transformation.
My wife & I did the Cleansing Stream course at our church earlier this year. We both benefitted from it and I believe that others in the group did too. Our church is due to start the next round of Cleansing Stream from August 25. So it is very much a ministry in our church. My wife & I recommend Cleansing Stream to anyone in our church because of it’s benefits. Personally, I am on fire for God and ready to step up to the next stage of the journey with him. To this end we are exploring some ministry ideas with pastors at the church, that use the SHAPE that God has given us. I’m so glad to be free of the emotional baggage that accumulated over the years.
Communion with God Ministries (Mark and Patti Virkler) is also a ministry that brings the life-changing truth of God’s healing power. It also teaches believers the thing they want most: How to hear God’s voice.
Thanks Jesse. Yes, you’re right. I’ve attended Mark’s hearing from God seminar. It confirmed how left brained I am.
This ‘chat’ area is a blessing to read. People are openly sharing their hearts, and asking for prayer. Thanks to all the contributors. I have contributed before, but I would like to share something that is on my heart deeply. In a crisis, I have found that God places people in my path that don’t necessarily attend the same church, or even know the Lord personally. He touches my life and my heart in different ways…sometimes even talking to me through the sound of the wind, or the birds chirping. I will not say never, but I will say ‘seldom’ do I find healing within the context of the church structure. We hear wonderful sermons, and respond to them at the Lord’s leading…but there aren’t many hugs, phone calls…there is not a lot of caring for the individual needs of a person. We are so often caught up in the ‘Christians have to be positive, thankful people…that can rise above the problems of the day if ‘they have enough faith’!” It is hard to be real and to say ‘I am hurting’! I believe on the day of Pentecost, Believers were gathered together waiting on the Lord, and in this place, God met the people and ministered to the needs of their hearts. They were together! They were there for each other. In that unity God flowed! We need to be crying out to God for His visitation yet again, that people like me…like many others, will find wholeness and healing. Thank you Dr. Grant for opening up the opportunities, and for sharing the Father Heart of God! You touch my life deeply…you touch the lives of others deeply. Thank you! Blessings!
Thanks for your comment Sue, but OUCH!
Every pastor needs to read your comment. Fortunately, God isn’t limited to the church to speak to us.
Good morning Dr Grant. Thank you for your response. I talked with pastors about what I wrote on more than one occasion, but because of all their own personal baggage, they can’t hear. I am not criticizing them, but I do realize that they are people, called by God, and yet like the rest of us, they are struggling in different areas of their lives. I am reminded over and over again that ‘Jesus came to set the captives free…that they might be free indeed’. The enemy of our souls is working hard to see that although this is already fulfilled, that we don’t grasp onto the fullness of this statement. Sometimes I have felt condemned by this verse…because in so many ways I am still a captive. And yet, in God’s great love, He keeps reassuring me to keep pressing into the healing, and He will do the rest. Sometimes His leading seems bizarre according to the church standards…very real in the world standards. Because of the small understanding of the uniqueness of God and His incredible love for His children, we box Him in ‘church style’! I am praying for…longing for…the day that the Church will arise victorious…and that we will see the Risen Lord appear yet again. As one of the church, this admonition is for me as well. There is such joy in knowing my personal Lord and Savior, and His Voice…and to obediently follow His leading…trusting Him to stop me if I am going the wrong direction. I listen to His Voice and trust Him to say ‘This is My way…go in it!’. Oh, what an awesome Savior we have. In Him, we can live and move and have our being! Praise the Lord!